FICCO or First Community Cooperative is a multibillion community-type cooperative with its base in Cagayan De Oro City. It was founded By Fr. William Masterson, SJ in 1954 and was formerly the Ateneo Credit Union (ACU), a closed type cooperative with only 18 members until 1975 when the cooperative transformed to what it is today.

To date, the cooperative is on its 60th year. It has established 72 business offices and branches in Visayas and mostly in Mindanao. It also has recently opened its first branch in Makati, Metro Manila.

Today, the cooperative has more than 180,000 members nationwide and continues to grow that number. All members were come from different sectors representing farmers, drivers, labourer, vendors, businessmen, government and private employee, and professionals.

“The momentum of success of the cooperative is credited to its members who continuously patronize and avail all services the cooperative offers”, said Mr. Edgardo Micayabas, FICCO’s Chief Executive Officer. Proof of this is the exceptional growth FICCO has experienced since its inception as Ateneo Credit Union in 1954.

FICCO Babuyan Program

Lending is the main business of the cooperative. It offers different types of loans to the members. These loans can be regular loans, agricultural loans, commercial loans, financing loans, travel loan, housing loans, commodity loans, medical loans, and other loan services covering educational, calamity, salary, etc.

Under the agricultural loan program which includes livestock loan for the members, FICCO offered a new program on piggery loan, called FICCO Babuyan

The program was started in the last quarter of 2013 as a joint venture project of FICCO and Feedpro, where the former provides the financial aspect, medication, and market for the pigs, while the later provides the feeds, supply of pigs and technical assistance to the beneficiaries. The beneficiaries on the other hand are in-charge of growing the pigs.

To avail of the FICCO Babuyan loan, the cooperative first offers training to interested members with priority to those who already are engaged in backyard piggery or those with experience in hog raising. If initially qualified, the members should have idle land of at least 20 square meters for a pigpen with a minimum of 12 piglets. The cooperative will grant a 109,000 Pesos loan covering the expenses for feeds, piglets and construction of pigpen. After four months of growing cycle, the pigs are marketed, and the deducted amount from the total sale will go to payment of their loan and the excess will go to the members.

The first pilot project was started in Opol, Misamis Oriental with only 3 members. It was later on introduced and implemented to other loan recipients. Currently, the program has 11 beneficiaries, with 3 of them already restocking the next batch of pigs and 8 in growing stage.

Babuyang Walang Amoy of one of FICCO’s members

FICCO Meat Shop

To have a further regular market for their FICCO Babuyan program, the cooperative established the FICCO Meat Shop as their support market. The meat shops sell fresh meat produced by the members and other products

Under FICCO meat shop, beneficiaries were offered a guaranteed price and market for their pigs. With this, the members eluded the chances of losing their profit from low buying prices from middle men, a cased learned to their previous piggery loan.

Aside from buying and selling meat, FICCO meat shop offers a “meat loan” to the coop’s members. Any member can avail the loan based on their unencumbered savings set by the coop. The members can loan 1 kilo to 35 kilos of meat amounting of 226.80 to 7,938.00 pesos respectively with inclusion of 1.25% service fee. This way the meat can easily be sold, since cooperative members are very much enticed to buy.

FICCO Meat Shop

Related articles

What makes a good harvest?: major factors to consider in hog raising

There are so many aspects that cause poor harvest. Choosing the right feed is important but there are also factors to consider that influences their performance. With this, we have to carefully monitor the factors that can lead us to better yield in harvest....

Finding the right business to start when returning home is an ambition for many Filipinos working abroad. For Ms. Tess Tenorio, a farming-related business is on the top of her list. After 20 years of working in Saipan as a QA supervisor in...

“To have a high lactation it requires a food with a high level of nutrition in order to produce higher milk in the sow body” For the past years, the genetic progress in pig production has given rise to sows that are more prolific...